The Book of Lost Friends: A Novel (22 page)

I go back and rest on my knees beside the woman. “Tell me about your people. I’ll remember it, and soon’s there comes a chance, I’ll get it in our
Book of Lost Friends.
”

She says her name is Florida. Florida Jones. And while the music plays someplace nearby and folks stroll on the boardwalk, and a smith’s hammer sings out
whang-ping-ping, whang-ping-ping,
and horses snort and lick their muzzles, dozing lazy at the hitch racks, Florida Jones tells me her tale.

When she’s done, I say it all back to her. All seven names of her children, and the names of her three sisters and two brothers, and the places where they been carried off from her and who by. I wish I could write it down. I’m carrying the book and what’s left of the pencil, but I can’t make enough letters and how they sound. Don’t know how to work the pencil, either.

Florida’s thin hands reach out, cold on my skin. Her shawl falls away, and I see the brand on her arm.
R
for runaway. Before I think what I’m doing, I touch a finger to it.

“I gone off seekin’ my children,” she tells me. “Ever’time they take one, I go seekin’. Stay seekin’ long’s I can, till they find me, or the pattyrollers cotch me, or the dogs git on me, bring me back home to that place I hate and that man I been made to be with against my wants. Once I get over the punishin’, Marse say, ‘Make another baby, you two, or else…’ and then that man get on me and pretty soon, I’m ripenin’ up again with another one. Love that sweet, pretty thing when it comes. Ever’time, Marse tell me, ‘Florida, you get to keep this one.’ And ever’time, he find hisself in need of money, off they go. And he say, ‘Well, that one was too fine to keep, Florida.’ And I just sit and cry out and mourn till I can get away and go searchin’.”

She asks if I could write a letter for her and mail it to the
Southwestern
newspaper. Then she hands over her cup for me to take the money.

“It ain’t enough yet, to pay for the paper,” I tell her. “But we can go on and get the letter ready. And the day’s early, yet. Might be we could help you sell the rest of your—”

Commotion in the street stops me. I turn in time to hear a woman scream and a man holler as a wagon just misses somebody. A horse tied at hitch sits back against the reins and breaks the slobber leathers and somersaults over its tail, its hooves kicking and thrashing the air. Other horses spook and pull and tug their reins free and wheel off. One smacks into a man riding a ewe-necked chestnut colt that looks barely old enough to be under saddle.

“Har!” the man hollers and jerks up the rawboned colt, puts the spurs to it and whips it over and under with his long bridle reins. The colt downs its head and goes to bucking—just misses barreling right into Missy Lavinia, who’s wandered from the bench. She’s standing in the street, just staring off. The wagon team bolts and the driver fights to gather them up before there’s a runaway. Folks on foot and dogs scatter in every direction. Men run to the hitch rails to grab their horses, and loose mounts hightail down the street, the reins flying free.

I jump up and go to running while the colt and its rider kick up dust clouds, them hooves sailing past Missy, but she just stands there looking.

Somebody calls from the boardwalk, “Yeehaw! Look at ’im buck!”

I get to Missy Lavinia just before the colt finally lands spraddle-legged, buckles in the knees, and goes down hard, rolling over the top of its rider, who hangs on and comes halfway back up when the colt does. “Git on yer feet, you broom-tail dink.” The man whips the horse on the face and ears till it finds its legs again, then he spurs it toward Missy Lavinia. “Git out the street! Ya spooked my horse!” He grabs a rope from his saddle, meaning to hit her with it, I guess.

Missy throws her chin out and bares her teeth and hisses at him.

I try to move her up on the boardwalk where he can’t run us down, but she won’t budge, just stands there hissing.

The rope comes down hard. I feel it whip my shoulder, hear it sing side to side through the air, slapping saddle leather and horseflesh and whatever else it can reach. The rider reins the colt round, while the wild-eyed thing bawls and snorts and balks. It comes sidewards and spins and fights for its head, knocking into Missy Lavinia. She goes down into the mud, and I fall atop of her.

“Please! Please! He addle-headed! He addle-headed! He don’t know!” I yell and throw my hands out front of us as the rope sings again. It hits my fingers hard, and I grab on, desperate to stop it. The rawhide honda whips back and hammers my cheekbone. Lights explode in my eyes, and then I’m falling down a deep hole into the black. I take the rope with me, hang on to it for all I’m worth. I hear the cowboy yelp and the colt stagger and then the thump of its heavy fall. I smell the gush of its breath.

The rope jerks me up before I can let go, and I fly forward off Missy. Next thing I know, I’m belly-down in the street and looking in that horse’s eye. It’s big and black, shiny like a drop of wet ink, white and red at the edges. It blinks one time, slow, looking into me.

Don’t be dead,
I say in my mind and see the rider pushing hisself out from under the laid-over colt. Other men run over, pulling at the ropes that’ve got the poor thing tangled. One more blink, and they shoo the horse to its feet, and it stands there splayed and heaving, better off than the man, who’s on one leg. He tries to stand but folds, and howls and goes halfway down before somebody catches him.

“Gimme my rifle!” he yells out, struggling for the scabbard on his saddle. The colt spooks and buggers away. “Gimme my rifle! I’m-a git rid of us a halfwit and its boy! You be needin’ a shovel to pick up what’s left when I git through.”

I shake the fog out of my head. Need to get up, get away before he puts a hand on that gun. But the world spins, everything moving like a dust devil—old Florida, the sorrel colt, a red-and-white-striped pole by a store, the sun shining on a window glass, a woman in a rose-pink dress, a wagon wheel, a barking dog on a leash, the shoeshine boy.

“Hang on. Now just hold on,” somebody else says. “Sheriff’s comin’.”

“That halfwit tried to kill me!” the man hollers. “Him and his boy tried to kill me and steal my horse. He’s broke my leg! He’s broke my leg!”

Go, Hannie, run,
my mind shouts.
Get up! Run.

But I don’t know which way
is
up.

BENNY SILVA—AUGUSTINE, LOUISIANA, 1987

Few things are more life affirming than watching an idea that was fledgling and frail in its infancy, seemingly destined for birth and death in almost the same breath, stretch its lungs and curl its fingers around the threads of life, and hang on with a determination that can’t be understood, only felt. Our three-week-old history project, which the kids have dubbed
Tales from the Underground,
in a mixture of the original
Tales from the Crypt
idea and an homage to the Underground Railroad, the freedom chain that helped escaped slaves make their way north, has found its feet.

On Tuesdays and Thursdays in the classroom, we’re reading about heroes of the Underground Railroad like Harriet Tubman, William Still, and the Reverend John and Jean Rankin. The room that was once so deafeningly raucous I couldn’t hear myself think, or so quiet I could hear—even over my own reading of
Animal Farm
—the clock ticking and the soft wheeze of students napping at their desks, is now noisy with tapping pens and pencils and snatches of lively, perceptive debate. Over the past two weeks, we’ve talked at length about the national and political conditions of the antebellum time period, but also about the local histories we’re uncovering on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, when we line up and march two blocks down the street, not always in an orderly fashion, to the old Carnegie library.

The library itself has become a partner in our
Tales from the Underground
project, adding colorful local history to our discussions, not only because of the story of how the grand old building came to be but also what it meant and how it served for decades. Upstairs in an old theater-style community room, aptly dubbed the Worthy Room, framed photos on the walls testify to a different life, a different time, when Augustine was officially divided along the color line. The Worthy Room hosted everything from stage plays, political meetings, and performances by visiting jazz musicians, to soldiers mustering for war and Negro league baseball teams forbidden to bunk at the hotels and in need of a place to sleep over.

In the nearby Destiny Room, with a couple weeks of hard work by the kids, borrowed folding tables from the church next door, and the help of some legacy descendants of the library’s Ladies New Century Club, we’ve created a temporary research center of a sort. It’s the first time this much of the area’s historical information has been gathered in one place, as far as we know. Over the years, Augustine’s history has been tucked away in desk drawers, attics, file boxes at the courthouse, and dozens of other out-of-the-way spaces. It has survived mostly in bits and snatches—in faded photos, family Bibles, church baptismal records, deeds of sale for land parcels, and memories passed down from generation to generation as children sat at the knees of grandparents.

The problem is, in today’s world of fractured families, readily available cable TV entertainment, and video games that can be plugged into home television sets for hours of Pong and Super Mario Bros. and Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!!, the stories are in danger of fading into the maelstrom of the modern age.

And yet, something in these young people
is
curious about the past, about what led to those who are here now and what…or who…came before.

Aside from that, the idea of dead people, and bones, and graveyards, and playing dress-up to bring ghosts to life is too much even for my most closed-off kids to fully resist. Perhaps it is the presence of Granny T and the other New Century ladies, but my students are all business in the Destiny Room and cooperative in sharing the ten pairs of white cotton gloves loaned to us by the church’s bell choir. And thanks to a speaking appearance by a history professor from Southeastern Louisiana University, the kids understand the fragility of old documents and why using the gloves really does matter. They’re careful with the materials we’ve borrowed from the library’s archives and the record cabinets of local churches, as well as those we’ve transported from Goswood Grove and the attics of various families around town.

Other than during the library’s short public hours, we are alone in the place, so noise doesn’t matter. And we
are
noisy. Ideas circle the room like honeybees, buzzing from landing place to landing place, gathering the nectar of inspiration.

Over the past three weeks, each day has brought new discoveries. Breakthroughs. Little miracles. I never imagined that teaching could be this way.

I love this job. I love these kids.

I think they’re starting to love me back.

A little, anyway. They’ve given me a new nickname.

“Miss Pooh,” Lil’ Ray says as my fourth-period freshman class makes the short trek over to the library for another Monday session.

“Yes?” I squint upward into the patches of sunlight and leaf shadow slipping over his chubby cheeks. He is a mountain of a kid, in the middle of the adolescent growth spurt that seems to hit boys about this age. I’d swear he was three inches shorter yesterday. He must be at least six two, yet his hands and feet are still huge for his body, as if he still has a lot to grow into. “You could put some chocolate chips in these.” He holds up the pooperoo he’s eating while we walk. He’s struggling to choke it down with no drink. Food is not allowed in the library, but there is an art deco drinking fountain on the way in. “I think that’d be good.”

“Then they wouldn’t be so healthy for you, Lil’ Ray.”

He chews another bite like he’s trying to process gristle.

“Miss Pooh?” He opens another topic. I’d like to believe that they’ve given me this delightful nickname because I am cuddly and charming in an
oh, bother
sort of way, à la Pooh Bear. But really, they’ve named me after the lumpy oatmeal cocoa cookies.

“Yes, Lil’ Ray?”

His gaze rolls upward, scans the trees as his tongue swipes the leftovers from his bottom lip. “I been thinkin’ about something.”

“That’s a miracle,” LaJuna smarts off. She returned as unceremoniously as she left and has been back in class for two and a half weeks now. She’s staying with Sarge and Aunt Dicey. Nobody, including LaJuna, knows how long that will last. She’s strangely lackluster and negative about the
Tales from the Underground
project. I don’t know if that’s because of her current life situation, or because the project developed while she was AWOL from school, or because she doesn’t like the fact that dozens of other students have horned in on her exploration of the secrets the judge left hidden in Goswood Grove House. That place was sacred territory for her, a refuge since her childhood.

Some days, I feel like I’ve betrayed a fragile trust with her or failed some important test, and we’ll never get to where I’d like to be. But I have dozens of other students to think about, and they matter, too. Maybe I’m being naïve and idealistic, but I can’t help hoping that
Tales from the Underground
has the potential to bridge the gaps that plague us here. Rich and poor. Black and white. Overprivileged and underprivileged. Backwoods kids and townies.

I wish we could bring the school at the lake in on it, draw together students who live within a few miles of one another yet inhabit separate worlds. The only reasons they comingle are to battle it out on the football field, or sit in close proximity over boudin balls and smoked meat at the Cluck and Oink. But during what have turned into regular Thursday evening update sessions at my house, Nathan has already warned me that Lakeland Prep Academy is one of the places I need to stay away from, and so I have, and will.

“So, Miss Pooh?”

“Yes, Lil’ Ray?” There is no short discussion with this kid. Every conversation goes this way. In stages. Thoughts move carefully through that head of his. They percolate while he seems lost in space, looking at the trees, or out the window, or at his desktop as he painstakingly manufactures spit wads and paper footballs.

But when the thoughts finally do emerge, they’re interesting. Well developed. Carefully considered.

“So, Miss Pooh, like I said, I been thinking.” His oversized hands wheel in the air, pinkie fingers sticking out as if he’s practicing to drink tea with the queen. The thought makes me smile. Every one of these kids is so unique. Filled with incredible stuff. “There’s not just dead grown-ups and old people in that cemetery,
and
in the cemetery books.” Consternation knits his brows. “There’s a lot of kids and babies that hardly even got born before they died. That’s sad, huh?” His voice trails off.

Coach Davis’s star lineman is choked up. Over infants and children who perished more than a hundred years ago.

“Well, of course they did, numb nut,” LaJuna snaps. “They didn’t have medicine and stuff.”

“Granny T said they’d mash up leaves ’n’ roots ’n’ mushrooms ’n’ moss ’n’ stuff,” skinny Michael pipes up, anxious to do his job as Lil’ Ray’s wingman-slash-bodyguard. “Said some of that worked
better
than medicines do now. You didn’t hear that, homegirl? Oh, that’s right, you skipped that day. Show up, you might know the stuff, like the rest of us, and not be raggin’ on Lil’ Ray. He’s trying to help the
Underground
project. And there’s you over there, wanting to tear it down.”

“Yeah.” Lil’ Ray straightens from his ever-present slump. “If losers would stop saying loser stuff,
I
was gonna say that we can play people
our
age, or people that’re older, like we can color our hair gray and all. But we can’t play
little
kids. Maybe we oughta get some little kids to come and help, and do some of the kid graves. Like Tobias Gossett. He lives down from us in the apartments. He ain’t got nothing to do, mostly. He could be that Willie Tobias that’s in the graveyard. The one that died in the fire with his brother and sister because his mama had to leave them home. People oughta know, maybe, you can’t leave little kids by theirselves, like that.”

The lump that was in Lil’ Ray’s throat transfers to mine. I swallow hard, trying to get it under control. A sudden uprising of opinions erupts for and against that plan. Copious slurs, a dis of poor little Tobias, and a dusting of mild curse words add to the debate, but not necessarily in a productive way.

“Time-out.” I use the referee hand signal to make my point. “Lil’ Ray, hold that thought a minute.” Then I address the rest of them. “What are classroom rules?”

A half dozen kids roll their eyes and groan.

“Do we
gotta
say it?” somebody pipes up.

“Until we start remembering to follow it, yes,” I insist. “Or we can go back to the classroom and diagram sentences. I’m good either way.” I make the motion of a choir conductor’s baton. “All together now. What’s Article Number Three of our Classroom Constitution?”

An unenthusiastic chorus responds, “We encourage vigorous debate. Civil debate is a healthy and democratic process. If one cannot make one’s point without yelling, name-calling, or insulting others, one should develop a stronger argument before speaking further.”

“Good!” I take a mock bow. We’ve carefully drafted the Classroom Constitution as a group, which I’ve blown up on the copier, laminated, and permanently affixed to one side of the chalkboard. I’ve also given every kid a portable copy. They get extra points for knowing it.

“And Article Two? Because I have so far detected three—count them,
three
—violations of that one in this recent conversation.” I turn and walk backward, directing the choir again. Thirty-nine annoyed faces silently say,
You are insufferable, Miss Silva.

“If the word is derogatory or improper in polite company, we don’t use it in Miss Silva’s class,” the troupe murmurs as we near the library steps.

“Yes!” I pretended to be wildly delighted with their ability to commit the constitution to memory. “And better yet, don’t use it
outside
of class, either. Those words make us sound average and we don’t settle for average because we are…
what
?” I point the pistol fingers—our school symbol—their way.

“Outstanding,” they drone.

“Alrighty then!” An uneven joint in the sidewalk foils my mojo, and I slip sideways on my platform clogs and almost go off the curb. LaJuna, Lil’ Ray, and a quiet nerdy girl named Savanna rush forward to catch me, while the rest of the class erupts in snickers and giggles.

“I’m good. I got it!” I say and pause to recover my shoe.

“We oughta add ‘Don’t walk backward in clogs’ to the Classroom Constitution.” It’s the first lighthearted thing LaJuna has said since she came back to school.

“You’re funny.” I wink at her, but she’s angled herself the other way. The rest of the group has paused to keep from running me down, but they are also focused on the library steps.

I turn around and my heart gives a
flit flit flutter,
like a butterfly rising. There stands Nathan. I let a brightly colored “Hey!” fly out before I can swat it down. Heat pushes into my cheeks as a random observation darts across my consciousness. The aqua T-shirt nicely complements his eyes. He looks good in it.

And the thought ends right there, like a sentence cut short, left dangling without punctuation.

“You said to…come by. If I had the chance.” Nathan seems uncertain. Maybe he feels the weight of having an audience, or maybe he senses my self-consciousness.

Thirty-nine sets of curious eyes watch us acutely, reading the situation.

“I’m glad you did.” Do I still sound too bubbly? Too pleased? Or just welcoming?

I’m acutely aware that until now, our association has always been over Cluck and Oink takeout at my house. In private. Since our first all-night research session, we’ve just drifted into a Thursday evening thing, as it’s a convenient night for both of us. We look over the latest findings from Goswood Grove, or pieces of the kids’ research, or various documents that Sarge and the New Century ladies have managed to dig up at the parish courthouse. Whatever’s new in the
Underground
project.

Then we walk the old plot maps of the plantation graveyard and a potter’s field that lies between the orchard and the main cemetery fence. Occasionally, we wander to the quiet, moss-covered stones, concrete crypts, and ornate brick and marble structures that hold the aboveground gravesites of Augustine’s most prominent citizens. We’ve visited the resting place of Nathan’s ancestors in a private section of stately mausoleums, the elaborate marble structures encircled by an ornate wrought iron fence. The statues and crosses cresting their interment places, including those of Nathan’s father and the judge, reach skyward, far above our heads, denoting wealth, importance, power.